


some nights I thirst for real blood

by scorpiod



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Ignores most of S3, M/M, Post-Season/Series 02, Sibling Incest, Tattoo Kink, Tattoos, Vampire Bites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:33:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20109196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod
Summary: Set afterSanta Sangre. Seth tries to get used to the new normal.





	some nights I thirst for real blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vandoorne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vandoorne/gifts).

> Title taken from Okkervil River's _For Real_.
> 
> I liked a lot of your prompts and there's a lot more I wanted to do with this, but I hope you enjoy this!

They get separate rooms while setting up shop at Jackknives, and Seth hates it, just a little. 

“Oh, so that’s how it’s gonna be?” Seth spits out. “That's how it is now?”

Richie just arches an eyebrow. “It’s a nice room. What are you complaining about?”

It _is_ a nice room, bigger than any room he's ever had, all soft fluffy sheets and mahogany bed frame, adjoining bathroom connected to it. 

Maybe it’s fair, that Richie wouldn't want to be near him—after holding his face in the sunlight and watching him burn, it might be more than a little earned. Seth's not sorry so this is the best he can do. 

But there’s something unbearably lonely about a wide vast empty room, watching his brother walk away again.

It feels like being left behind.

(Seth hates it a lot—a lot more than a little)

*

He won’t tell Richie, but he kinda likes watching him feed. 

It’s funny, in a way, watching some asshole gets theirs. Seeing the look in their eyes when Richie’s face turns into a low budget horror movie. 

_Yeah, that's right, you're done for_, Seth thinks as they back away in fear, _you don't know what you fucked with._

Siccing Richie on a dude, pointing him in the right direction and watching shit go down—better than the movies. 

What's funnier is how he tries to be so damned civilized about it: carrying around a fancy napkin to wipe his mouth, like he's not a walking Nosferatu now. 

He doesn't say anything. Just tells him to hurry it up. 

(whenever he watches Richie feed, the scar on his neck throbs—covered up and hidden, but not gone, always flaring up, hot and inflamed)

*

Seth is now the fearless leader of Houston culebras, and he's not sure what to do with it. 

Everyone has fangs but him. Seth doesn't want it to bother him, but it does.

If Richie weren’t mad at him, he’d ask him _you think I’m cut out for this?_ because he isn't sure, he can’t be sure, and that feeling is twisting his guts like rope, thick enough to choke him. He's not looking to get stabbed in the back by angry vampire underlings. Or the neck. 

But Richie is still mad, so he doesn't ask. 

Seth just fiddles around with Malvado’s scary weapons, poking his fingers on the thumb covers with sharp spikes, thinking about how to rip someone’s face off with them, and shuddering. 

*

He watches Richie do his thing, conducting meetings, lecturing and advising culebras—that's what being culebra head honcho means now. 

Seth sits at the back of the class, legs propped up on the table, finishing off a bottle of whiskey. 

He's not sure when Richie evolved into mob boss before his eyes, but there are five missing years and three months between the two of them, and it’s too long to be apart, too long for a person to not change and grow into something new, someone Seth doesn't know. 

Richie grew a thirst for blood and scales under all his pretty skin, and Seth got a tattoo and an addiction he's currently feeding with alcohol, trying not to think of needles. 

It doesn’t seem like a fair trade. 

(_since when has his life ever been fair, anyway?_)

*

Richie is careful not to get blood all over his perfect, well-tailored, expensive, _nice_ suit. 

“It’s unavoidable, brother, you're gonna get dirty.” Red dripping down his jaw, his throat, staining his collar, the white ruined, telegraphing to all what he's been doing. 

“Some of us want to look professional,” Richie says, with an edge to the word _professional_, like a taunt that lands hard enough to make Seth feel the sting of it. 

Seth's never been good at keeping his suit clean. It used to drive Richie up the wall. 

Richie moves different now—something smoother in the way he walks, taller, even, his shoulders straight, a lack of self-consciousness that Richie used to have. He walks surely and silently around, hovering around Seth, hovering around his employees, prepared to strike at any time.

Sometimes Seth thinks that’s not his brother, can’t be his brother, just something dressed up in a Richie suit, wearing it only half-well. 

(sometimes, Seth knows that _is_ his brother, and feels the flare of anger burning up under his ribcage) __

_ __ _

_ __ _

He wants to break open that skin of his and see what’s inside, what’s different, what’s the same. 

Pick apart the blood and guts until Seth knows him again, knows all the parts of his brother like he used to—like Seth knows himself, but better than. 

* 

Feeding is a complicated thing, needs delicate handling. They have this rule, _not on property_, not unless you’re gonna let them live after, but as Richie said, _we sure as shit ain’t disposing of any bodies for you and you’re not gonna bring that heat down on us_. 

“Used to be, someone just _brought_ Malvado girls to eat from the comfort of his own chair,” some hotshot says. 

Seth socks them in the face, doesn't give a shit if he's a culebra or not. He has, pocketed in his hand, Malvado’s fancy little murder ring, and he makes sure it catches on the skin when he punches, enough to tear skin and flesh, enough make the disrespectful culebra scream and fall to the floor, clutching his bleeding face. 

Everything is quiet for a moment. Richie just stares at him, expression unreadable. Seth's heart is in his ear, thudding like a bass drum. 

“That's nothing,” someone whispers. “Malvado used to rip people’s faces off.”

Richie starts to say something, something leader sounding, some culebra bullshit that Seth hardly understands, like a whole other language when he knows Richie is speaking plain English. Seth doesn't have any goddamn patience for this. 

He pulls out his gun and shoots the fallen culebra point blank in the face, several rounds, enough that his ears ring afterwards, enough rounds so his brain is gone and Seth’s covered in blood and the hotshot wannabe culebra goes _poof_. 

Dust. 

He turns around, gun in hand, smiling wide and toothily.

“Anyone who has a problem with the rules can have a chat with Mr. 45 and my wooden stake. Got it?”

No one says anything, but somewhere in the crowd, Richie laughs. 

* 

Richie removes his glasses before every kill and puts them back on afterwards when he's done. 

It's those kind of details that Seth picks up on, watching Richie feed, night after night. He sits in the car and watches Richie in the distance, shove some guy against the alleyway wall and sink his teeth in. 

The scar on his own neck, hidden by the tattoo, aches in sudden sympathy. Seth pressed two fingers to the mark, as if to stifle the pain and lets out a shuddering sigh, a tremble working its way through his body, a white-hot ache he can never seem to quell. 

He can still feel the scar. He can still feel his brother’s teeth.

* 

“You keep watching me,” Richie accuses.

They're in Richie’s bedroom and they were supposed to be discussing business, but instead, it's this. 

“I've always watched you,” Seth responds, which is the truth. He has never not had eyes for Richie. 

He can't remember a time where he didn't. 

“What are you looking for?” Richie asks. He crowds against Seth, pushes him back against Richie’s desk. 

Seth thinks he lets him, but it's not as if he could stop him.

Richie leans in closer, almost nuzzling his neck now, and his nostrils flare. 

“Are you smelling me?” Seth laughs, can't help it. It's absurd. Everything is so absurd now. He wants to ask what he smells like. 

Richie doesn't laugh. He runs his fingers over the black ink on Seth's skin. He draws a vulnerable gasp out of Seth, when he finds the actual puncture marks, hidden away. 

For a moment, neither of them can say anything. Seth's heart races. Blood flushes his face and runs down to his cock. Like old times. 

Been a long, long time. 

“I can stop,” Richie offers, meeting his eyes. His eyes are bright and blue and human behind his glasses. 

Seth reaches for his glasses. “Don't know why you still wear these things,” he says. He removes them from Richie’s nose, careful, almost reverent—a kind of muscle memory, if a bit creaky—and places them on the desk. 

“They make me feel normal,” Richie answers. 

“You mean human?” Seth says, but there's no bite in it. He strokes Richie’s brow, as if he could feel the scales under his skin, the rough bumps just laying below the surface. 

Then Seth grabs Richie’s hand and takes him to bed. 

*

In the dark, Seth sits straddling his brother—tie gone, suit jacket gone, dress shirt buttons undone half way, enough so his throat and collarbone was completely exposed. Richie is fully clothed, dressed to the nines, _professional_, but he can feel his hard cock through the sleek fabric of his dress slacks. 

Richie stares at his throat, at the black flames that now crawl up his skin, on his shoulder. He's fascinated, like Seth is a science project, a puzzle he’s still working out. Richie always loved puzzles. 

He traces the lines of the new tattoo, from his shoulder, all the way up to the bite marks Richie left on him—that first time, the first night, Seth his first taste of blood and how that now feels just _right_, of course Seth should be his first. 

Seth shudders at the contact. Richie presses down harder, until Seth lets out a soft cry, hips jerking, grinding down as his head falls back. 

“Jesus, Richard,” Seth says, “what the—”

“Were you hiding this?” Richie asks, careful with his words, “or commemorating it?”

That's what the tattoo was, all those years ago. 

_Remember when Richie pulled him from a fire? _

__

__

_Remember when Richie killed their old man?_

It's all the same to him at the end of the day. 

Seth still doesn't have an answer. Instead, he says, “I couldn't stop thinking about you.”

And he couldn't, every day Richie was gone. Restless days and long nights that all blurred together. Picking and clawing at his own scar until he tore it open, again and again, like maybe Richie was still there, if only he dug hard enough. Shoving needles inside it and letting the heroin take him under, Richie’s name on his lips. 

“I know,” Richie says. He doesn't apologize. He presses his lips to Seth’s scar, so gently it hurts. 

Seth trembles, holding back a moan, and bares his throat. 

“You can do it again,” Seth says. 

This is his apology. 

Richie hesitates, looking up at him, eyes wide, waiting for Seth to say something cruel, sharp and cutting about what a monster he is. It never comes.

Richie's eyes turn golden, mouth parting to reveal the ends of fangs. In this light, it makes him look as fragile as Seth feels, torn wide open. 

His teeth pierce through Seth's skin again, through the tattoo, in the same place he bit him that first time, months ago. He's careful, trying not to wreck the rest of his skin, leave the tattoo mostly alone. Pain and heat flare through him, from his neck and outward, like all the times he's poked and prodded at himself explode inside him all at once and together they both moan in tandem. 

_It hurts_, Seth thinks, Richie’s mouth. 

He doesn't want anything else but this. 

*

Later, Richie tells him he smells like home.


End file.
